Infrastructure

Capital Improvement Program

The Capital Improvement Program (CIP) is a planning and budgeting tool that provides information about SAWS' infrastructure needs. It identifies requirements for sustaining, restoring and modernizing the facilities and infrastructure that support water supply and delivery, wastewater collection and treatment, and heating and cooling requirements in the SAWS service area. It also prioritizes and schedules them for funding and implementation through a multi-year plan.

The CIP supports four core business areas: Chilled Water, Water Delivery, Wastewater and Water Resources. The 2017 program totals $367.5 million, broken out as follows:

The 2017 Wastewater program continues an expanded Sanitary Sewer Improvements program to reduce sanitary sewer overflows through visual inspection, cleaning, and repairing or replacing aging and defective sewer mains. In addition, SAWS will upsize sewer mains in need of increased capacity and rehabilitate or eliminate lift stations that contribute to sanitary sewer overflow.

For the 2017 wastewater program, $178.8 million is budgeted specifically for the Sanitary Sewer Improvements Program, including Lift Station rehabilitation and elimination. SAWS will start construction on a $41.1 million sewer main rehabilitation in the Eastern sewershed between Seguin Road and Nacogdoches Road that will reduce the frequent sanitary sewer overflows, as well as supporting growth upstream of the area. The Wastewater program includes $65.6 million for the design, rehabilitation and replacement of small and large diameter sewer pipelines, $20.3 million for governmental projects that support City of San Antonio, Bexar County, and TXDOT street, highway, and drainage improvements, and $4.1 million to begin design of improvements to the Dos Rios Water Recycling Center.

The 2017 Water Delivery program includes connecting three Joint Base San Antonio installations to SAWS water system, completing the water transmission main to connect the Micron and Anderson pump stations, drilling an additional well at the Micron pump station, designing the expansion of the Turtle Creek No. 3 pump station and water storage tank, and rehabilitating the Zarzamora pump station. The Water Delivery program includes $25.9 million for governmental projects that support City of San Antonio, Bexar County, and TXDOT street, highway, and drainage improvements. The total SAWS Water Delivery program totals $75.1 million.

The 2017 Water Supply program includes $111.3 million to begin construction for integrating 50,000 acre-feet of new water supplies from the Vista Ridge pipeline into the SAWS distribution system.

The overall funding split for the 2017 water production and delivery and the wastewater collection and treatment program is 90% repairs and replacements and 10% additional capacity to support new growth and development.

The 2017 program was developed using a refined prioritization process started in 2006. Projects generated by the CIP stakeholder groups from SAWS’ Treatment, Production, Master Planning, Facilities Engineering, Operations, and Distribution and Collection departments were reviewed and scored by a CIP Planning Group consisting of submitting vice presidents, directors and managers from SAWS Engineering and Operations groups. The scoring process addressed the business risk exposure, independent of available funds, through a derivative of the Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) methodology. FMEA provides a structured approach to the analysis of risk through a composite index that considers potential impact of failure, probability of occurrence, and ability to mitigate the impact. Projects were totaled by dollar amount and compared to the long term funding strategy. The CIP projects were developed using recent cost estimates, and SAWS overhead and an inflation factor of 2.8% per year were added to develop the programmed costs for 2017 and future years. The 2017 and 5-year CIP project lists were reviewed in detail by an executive CIP review committee. Projects were totaled by dollar amount and compared to the long term funding strategy and final selection was made by SAWS Executive Management Team and approved by SAWS Board of Trustees.

The 2017 CIP projects were collected, reviewed, ranked, and summarized in SAWS Capital Projects Management System (CPMS), which was brought online in mid-2015. This system streamlines the CIP into an enterprise project management system that increases the efficiency and visibility of the program.

Please note that the Capital Improvement Program project list is subject to change due to funding, project needs, and emergencies.